Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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11. Now all that is engendered is imperfect, it is divisible, to increase subject and to decrease ; but with the Perfect [One] none of these things doth hold. Now that which is increasable increases from the Oneness, but succumbs through its own feebleness when it no longer can contain the One.
And now, 0 Tat, God's Image l hath been sketched for thee, as far as it can be 2 ; and if thou wilt attentively dwell on it and observe it with thy heart's eyes, believe me, son, thou'lt find the Path that leads above ; nay, that Image shall become thy Guide 3 itself, because the Sight [Divine] hath this peculiar [charm], it holdeth fast and draweth unto it those who succeed in opening their eyes, just as, they say, the magnet [draweth] iron.4
1 The Universal Cosmos or Monad.
2 The above sentences, beginning with " The Oneness," second
paragraph of § 10, are quoted by Stobseus, Phys., I. x. 15 ;
G. pp. 116, 117; W. 127, 6 ff . ; under the heading, "Of
Hermes."
3 Cf. G. #., vii. (viii.) 2 ; ix. (x.) 10 ; x. (xi.) 21 ; R. 23, n. 5.
4 This simile is also used in the Naassene Document, and in
Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris, where I have noticed it.
COMMENT AEY
THE TITLE
This beautiful little treatise, in which the great principles of the Gnosis are set forth so clearly and lucidly by the philosopher-mystic who penned it so many centuries ago, bears a double, or rather a triple, title: "Of Hermes to Tat: The Cup or Monad [or Oneness]." l The double title, however, is but a choice of names, for The Cup is The Oneness, — The One Element,2 the " Body " of God, which is the Cause of all bodies and yet itself is bodiless ; in other words, the Monad is the Intelligible Cosmos itself, God's Image, elsewhere called His Alone-begotten Son.
That this idea of a Cup or Mixing-bowl (Crater), in the symbolic sense of an all -containing receptacle, in which all the elements were blended together, and in the metaphysical sense of a transcendent Unity, the source of all things measurable and numberable, was one of the main doctrines of the Trismegistic tradition, is plain from the Pcemandrist Zosimus, who refers especially to this Cup as the symbol of Spiritual Baptism — that is, the plunging of the whole nature into the Great Ocean of Spirit or Mind, so that the man becomes irradiate with Life and illumined with Light.
For a consideration of this Crater or Cup symbolism I must refer the reader to the chapter so entitled in the "Prolegomena"; it there being shown that in all probability it was transmitted along the Orphic line of tradition, though doubtless the Egyptian had some similar ideas.
1 See R. 193. Unfortunately, though lie twice quotes from our treatise, Stobaeus adds nothing to our knowledge of the title, since he prefixes his extracts with the simple heading, "Of Hermes."
2 Which is to be equated, I believe, " nieta-physically " with the Quintessence or ^Ether.
Our treatise should be read in the closest connection with C. H., xi. (xii.), "The Mind to Hermes," which is its " esoteric " counterpart. What is here set forth for Tat by Hermes is there imparted to Hermes by the Mind; what is here set forth for the probationer or " hearer " is there set forth for the advanced disciple or " seer " ; or, to use Mystery terms, what is here told to the Mystes is there revealed to the Epopt. Thus, then, the Tat-instruction begins.
THE BAPTISM OF THE MIND
1. All things are made by Eeason, the Formative Energy of the Mind. The Ideal Cosmos, or World- Order, is the Divine Body.
2. Earth is the sensible Cosmos ; on Earth man, the image of the Image, or Eeason, of God rules. The purpose of man is thus to become the con tempi ator (OeaTw) of the works of God ; it is by the " wonder " aroused in him by the sight of these marvels that he will rise eventually into a knowledge of God Himself. This "wonder" is, then, the beginning of the True Philosophy or God-knowledge (*} TOV Oeov Karavorja-ts).